"We are coming to a point in our history in which we need to start looking for more space," Han Admiraal, a civil engineer with over two decades of experience in underground space, told AFP on the sidelines of this year's World Tunnel Congress.
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"Underground spaces could easily be used for growing crops," he said, as he toured the cavernous Bourbon Tunnel, dug deep under the Italian city of Naples as a potential escape route for King Ferdinand II of Bourbon after the 1848 riots.Scientific developments in areas like aquaponics—where vegetables and fish are farmed together—could help relieve the pressure on the food supply chain, and dramatically cut transport costs if such new farms were situated under cities.
Isn't excavation expensive?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @04:14AM (3 children)
Without further stipulations the actual winning strategy in this scenario is quite dark: have way too many kids, raise them with "take care of your elders" values, encourage roughly half of them (mostly the males) to get sterilized, and encourage all of them to send a cut of the basic income packages they receive/get-cuts-of up the pyramid scheme. Repeat. Expect religious sects to pop up around this model overnight.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 10 2019, @05:31AM
In the context of my reply, wasn't thinking about the society in general, only to my specific case.
I'll let others have their choices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 10 2019, @02:06PM (1 child)
This religious pyramid scheme has the same problem as all such schemes. It can only get so many levels deep and it involves more than the world's population.
If such a scheme gets started, then doesn't it actually further the goals of the UBI-for-sterilization program? In a few generations population would shrink.
You said without further stipulations. Here is a stipulation: you can only participate in UBI-for-sterilization if you've had no more than two or fewer offspring. Each of the up to two offspring decreases the UBI package you are offered. So getting sterilized before reproduction is the maximum benefit you can receive.
Other stipulation could be that if you and your parent is on UBI, you cannot provide any financial support to your ancestors. The whole point is that your UBI can support you, and perhaps a small family in exchange for you not procreating. Craft the policy that way.
People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Friday May 10 2019, @02:43PM
I don't see why it should stop working until the government goes cuts off the incentive. As long as the incentive exists, the population can keep growing by spending it on food/housing/etc.
I'm honestly missing the logic here. Are you assuming that these people will all be people who would otherwise still be in a reproduce-too-much religious sect? If so, I'm not convinced of that.
Oddly, despite explicitly saying that I assumed mo further stipulations, I actually did implicitly assume the further stipulation that anybody who already has children is not eligible. Thus, I think my proposed religious sect would survive your addendum. The founder never gets paid directly by the government, half of their children do. And so on for the fertile members of the next generation.
This is the sort of stipulation that would mangle but not break the scheme. It prevents the pyramidal structure from forming, but still allows for half of a sibling cohort to get sterilised and support the other half generation after generation. Another stipulation to consider (were we to go down this path) is having payouts be in part based on family structure as you proposed before, but considering sibling count; package benefits scale down exponentially as siblings scale linearly.